Biography

The projects first release was a single in 1988 of two Ministry outtakes from the Land of Rape and Honey album, entitled "Apathy" b/w "Better Ways". The name supposedly came from WaxTrax! co-founder/co-owner Jim Nash. When he heard the songs, he said "No one's gonna play this, it's gonna take a thousand homo DJs to play this for anyone to buy it."

"Apathy" was followed up by another single in 1990 featuring a cover of Black Sabbath's "Supernaut". The cover featured Nine Inch Nail's Trent Reznor on vocals and Rigor Mortis ' and Ministry touring member Mike Scaccia on lead guitar. The B-side featured a track called Hey Asshole, written by Al Jourgensen and drummer Jeff Ward. The track features a droning bass line and a constant chant of "Hey! Asshole!" (with Jello Biafra, amongst others), while Ward does an impersonation of a cop.

The "Supernaut" single was eventually issued on CD with the entire "Apathy" single as a bonus, while all four songs were later re-issued on the 2004 Ministry compilation "Side Trax" with the bands other short lived side projects.

The members of 1000 Homo DJs are identified by pseudonyms in the "Supernaut" CD liner notes. The identities of most members are fairly certain.

The nature of Trent Reznor's contribution to 1000 Homo DJs' record has been debated. What is certain is that Reznor recorded the original vocals for "Supernaut." This performance was not officially used because Reznor's label TVT Records refused to allow his appearance on the release.[6] Reznor's version would ultimately be released as "Supernaut (Trent Reznor Vocal Version)" by TVT four years later on the retrospective Black Box - Wax Trax! Records: The First 13 Years after TVT's purchase of Wax Trax!.

Jourgensen's immediate response to TVT's ultimatum is uncertain. An oft-repeated story tells that instead of recording new vocals, Jourgensen merely ran Reznor's performance through a distortion effect to mask its identity.[7][8] According to this story, every WaxTrax! recording of "Supernaut" contains Reznor's vocals. However, a dissenting group claims this is an urban legend, and that Jourgensen did record new vocals for the EP—albeit in a similar style to Reznor's initial performance.

Statements made by both Reznor and Jourgensen seem to confirm the latter view. In a 1992 Prodigy post regarding "Supernaut," Reznor said,

finally told Al to redo it without me. The version that Wax Trax put out is Al, the version on the NIN (bootleg, i might add) single is me.[9]

Reznor refers to the two-track Suck bootleg, which contains the recording of "Supernaut" that later appeared on Black Box. Jourgensen made a similar statement in a 2003 interview. When asked whose vocals appear on "Supernaut," Jourgensen replied,

That would be me on the original, on WaxTrax! The later version released on TVT was Trent Reznor... then the remixed version had my vocals on it.[10]

referring to the WaxTrax! EP, Black Box, and Greatest Fits versions, respectively. This corroborates that only the Trent Reznor Vocal Version contains Reznor's performance, and Jourgensen in fact sings on most versions of the song. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.